It's been a running joke with my mom of her talking about how much she hated growing up watching 70s movies. Basically every 70s movie, it's the most depressing ending possible, and then bam, the TV goes to the star spangled banner and then static, left alone to feel miserable.
Now I don't get depressed with movies so I've always half joked with her about it because I enjoy watching old movies that she couldn't be paid to watch, including depressing ones. And while the 70s is a decade I haven't seen as many movies proportionally to the 80s and 90s, I've seen enough to see ones with that standard 1970s ending where you think things will be ok and then the main character dies or whatever.
See this Family Guy clip for reference: Hilarious clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyGPlo8Rc5E
But let me tell you, I have seen a lot of movies, a lot of horror movies, weird cult movies, and everything in between, and Magic (1978) starring Anthony Hopkins is by far the most depressing movie I ever seen. I actually felt the way my mom describes when it was over, because I was too tired to watch anything else so I was just left with my thoughts.
It's not the ending, if it was the ending, it would be among all the other 70s movies, it's just the concept and how it's done in general. I don't want to say too much, that's why I'm being vague, but watch it and tell me I'm wrong. It's got to be one of the most tragic feeling films I've seen.
If you've seen the movie, let me know if you agree or if I was just being influenced by unknown depressing feelings, because it could be that, but I feel like my sense that this was beyond the normal level of depressing was genuine and not my mood.
So in conclusion the movie is a 10/10. If your Prozac is working too well, it's a good way to bring you back down a bit.
In all seriousness I did enjoy the movie, just wanted to hammer on the main point.
It still doesn't beat the single most soul-sucking, heart-wrenching, discouraging, anguish-inducing end to a 70s film ever put on screen. This one.
Agreed, worst fate imaginable
I've never seen anything so evil before in my entire life
Will look it up. I remember hearing that’s why Star Wars was such a success. Or part of the reason was that it was uplifting and hopeful when so many movies then were so depressing or nihilistic
That and actually looking good compared to every sci fi movie since 2001.
A hallmark of socially degenerate, nihilistic, secular behavior is creating artwork that doesn't ennoble, doesn't lift the spirit, doesn't venerate God and the Divine, but instead works solely on the material surface level of reality, judges it to be inferior to lived experience, and performatively laments the fact existence doesn't live up to childish desires. This is why the entire modernist and postmodernist movements are both secular and nihilistic: because the people involved were whining at the fallen world they created and not gratefully praising God for creation in the first place. Nietzsche's lament (and it WAS a lament) of the Death of God was most certainly a reaction to this very attitude that was emerging across Europe, because he saw exactly what would -- and has -- manifested from it. Art that makes you feel like shit is fruit from the tree of death, the same tree whose fruit we've all been eating since before we were even fucking born.
This is the difference between Tolkien and Martin, for instance. We all know whose work is going to reverberate forward to future generations. At least until all the orcs scour every Shire there is. Even then though, what story structure encourages rebirth and reconstruction? Tolkien's desire for goodness and life when surrounded by chaos and death, or Martin's extended passages about diarrhea?
I haven't seen this movie. I bet it's actually quite good. I also bet that it was written by someone who lives in resentful misery, unwilling to find a real solution because they value their ability to force their misery onto you.
Martin's works got popular as a reaction to lesser writers aping the very thing you are trying to hype.
What good is ennobling, of goodness or any positivity when its unearned? Subversion and "anyone can die randomly" resonates when you have become used to "and everyone lived happily ever after, all the good guys survived against the odds." Its speaking to you because the standard has become inorganic and lacks any inspiration.
Tolkien's work is so beautiful because it didn't shy away from consequences while still being simple "goodness triumphs over evil." The Shire doesn't remain safe, Frodo is mangled and broken even in his victory, and if that Fellowship didn't have courage enough to fight back despite some of them being completely ill prepared to do so the whole world would have been such.
But for quite a while in our media's history, instead it was "power of friendship/love will win!" and much other generic feel goodery without much loss that makes you take for granted so much of what makes those stories beautiful in the first place. You could draw no wonder and inspiration from it because it felt fake, characters were guaranteed to win or succeed and even their "consequences" felt tacked on instead of true.
Martin's work is trash, but its trash that got big because it was a symptom of our media's greater rot. Which was poor writers thinking "happy ending" or "good message" was enough to justify showing their low skilled nonsense to the masses.
I don't think that art or entertainment has to always be "positive".
Think of like 1920s, you go to a carnival. Some things are cool to watch there because of the talent and danger involved, like trapeze artists.
Others are dazzling because the performer creates an imaginative atmosphere with his control of the crowd as a magician, with smoke and lights creating an otherworldly feeling for his magic act.
Some things are appealing for the bizarre and the novelty, like freak shows; these are your conjoined twins, your bearded ladies, etc. It's a "Wow isn't that weird" reaction.
It's not meant to be subversive. Sometimes showing what's weird or unusual is interesting. I agree that a moral society should limit and prohibit the profane and things that truly subvert God and the Bible and are blasphemous, but I think novelty has probably always had a place in entertainment and art.
I wouldn't be accused of being liberal by anyone, but the most "liberal" side of me is the side that enjoys film. I'm a "film connoisseur" so I am very forgiving of artistic license in film particularly films of the past which weren't woke, but had their own moral issues that were different. However if I were "king of America" I wouldn't permit most of the same films I myself have enjoyed because an individual can enjoy a film, if they have the discernment to know what is subversive or demoralizing and dismiss it and see it for what it is, but on the general populace, art and entertainment does influence people on the large scale. It's like that line in Men in Black. A person is smart, but people are stupid.
However there is a limit to the swayability to the propaganda and subversiveness in film. You see today that people are abandoning movies, TV and games because of all the woke crap being shoved in, and they're not even good in the first place.
Jurassic Park would be an example of more dangerous propaganda in a way. It's feminism was there, but not as offensively egregious as feminist pushing narratives would be later on. It was 2 or 3 lines, just enough to squeeze in the feminist ideas, but not enough to distract from the spectacle of entertainment or draw too much attention to the feminist crap. Then you have the evolution lie and the "millions of years" lie which is intertwined deeply in the film narrative by nature, but they're careful not to be "preachy" about it, so people sit there absorbing lies against the Bible in the entertainment.
Now I like Jurassic Park. It's a fun movie, but that would be an example where if you're watching it with your children, point out the lies in the movie.
Yours was a very thoughtful analysis and very much appreciated.
This is all well said. I would just like to point out:
If your religion is inversion - if that's the whole point of it - ("up is down" and "as above so below" and upside down stars named pentagrams, upside down crosses, etc)
... then artwork that advances that worldview is lifting when viewed from the upside down perspective.
And if your god is Satan, or chaos, or whatever - they'll you'll venerate destruction and take pleasure in perverting and twisting beauty.
So in a sense, they are doing exactly what you describe, just for evil instead of for good.
in retrospect, the 70s felt like the first attempt at social controlling of the US. Nihilistic and anti-american film making and TV. Anti-vietnam and anti-war movies were everywhere along with sexual revolution movies like Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (a movie about 2 couples talking about having an orgy, planning on having an orgy and then have it... off screen... and life is good... all very intellectual, y'know) PBS had just formed in the late 60s and was leading crops of "artistic" films. CBS dropped all of its family friendly hits for "counter culture" series like Maude and All in the Family that attacked American values. I was a youngster at the time but they were attacking there, too. One of the big releases at the time towards kids was "Free to be you and me" with cartoons and catchy music numbers to get kids to understand that boys and girls are exactly the same and boys can want dolls. Ramrodded that to us through school and the local public library. (I was a budding 5 year old intellectual and ate it up at the time because these topics were "important") I'm still not sure where blaxploitation movies fall into all this...
You had some highlights there - Jaws, Halloween, Three Musketeers, etc but mainly then, like today, you went to movies to get preached at.
Star Wars, literally, smashed it all apart and suddenly the entertainment industry... wanted to entertain again. Animal House and Porky's brought back plain ol sex and girlwatching to the mainstream. Alien, Superman
Technically it started in the late 60s with media like Guess Who Is Coming To Dinner? and In The Heat of the Night.
One of the more obvious and egregious examples is Billion Dollar Brain, which basically had American White nationalists painted as the villains because they wanted to -- I kid you not -- assassinate Communist agents.
Holy shit, an Anthony Hopkins creepy puppet movie? How have I never seen this?!
I was thinking the same thing -- I dig into the trenches of fairly obscure stuff yet this one did utterly surprise me. Added it to my watchlist.
This is around the era that Hollywood was diving and a lot of the mov started to look outside for other methods to money laundering or gambling. Suddenly Las Vegas became a gambling hub.
Jewish screenplay. Big surprise.
Jews destroy your confidence.
From the 2 clips I saw on youtube its not for me. Looks similar to the shining. And I never find these movies depressing. Grave of the fire flies was pretty depressing. But nowadays I just have to open the news and know demographic statistics if I want to feel depressed which is quite hard when you are already very apathic to most things.
The China Syndrome says Hi.